gundamfandomcom-20200223-history
Talk:Orbital Elevator
Orbital Elevators! (1) I'm not sure what it says, but it looks important. Dav7d2 15:26, December 10, 2010 (UTC) In this Gundam Universe, a single orbital elevator capable to turn a nation in a military and energy superpower and energy crisis is a thing of the past. I'm curious to know how much energy does it elevator produce? - :Don't think they ever mentioned the output but I would assume it would need to at least equal the energy consumption of advanced human civilizations in the real world in total. It's probably more though since energy consumption may have increased due to more industrializing nations in the world. Since the solar energy system is the main energy source for humanity, the output of the total system likely equals most of humanity's usage in that world. :Still, it's hard to tell for sure. The world went through an energy crisis for a long time and a lot of actions needed to be done for civilization to cope during that period. I assume a lot of energy efficiency efforts were needed to conserve the increasingly limited energy. There was also an anti global warming project (global warming in 2308 was under control but it was something they still had to make an effort to keep in check) that meant that they had to limit their hydrocarbons to limit emissions. Nuclear energy was banned so I asks me they'll have to make do with what the rest of the energy sources they had while the orbital elevators were being built. :The population of humans on Earth is also around 6 billion in 2314 of 00's world while the population of real world estimate during 2013 is around 7.2 billion, so quite likely there was a demographic transition that to reduced birth rates that allowed it to become the norm. The reason why I'm mentioning population levels here is because populations levels is one of the more important factors you count when you want to measure the energy needs of a civilization/nation. How industrialized or advanced the state of the civilization economy is also a big factor in the energy consumption of a nation since there is a direct correlation between economic/civilization advanced and energy demand. You need energy to fuel a growing economy. :It was also wasn't the effort of a single nation. The investment needed to create the orbital elevators also was a mutual national effort that was too large for any single nation. S1 Novel 1 mentioned it required around 50 years of development and investment by many nations to have it done. This is the reasons the blocs were formed since super national effort was needed. There are of course nations that have more power and influence than others in a bloc, like the US for the Union and Russia and China for the HRL but the effort needed was on a multinational basis. :This is also one of the reasons why the blocs were reluctant give energy to countries who were starved of it like Azadistan since they never invested the project (and even went further actually fought a war to stop it since it was a threat to their fossil fuel economy). :It's also important to note that the importance of the Orbital Elevator is not just the energy it bring down from the solar satellite ring but also because it provides a cheap way to get materials to space. This allows the blocs to have easier access of space and some of the important rich material that are found on asteroids and such. This is in addition to other frontiers related to pride and such (since S1 was in a competitive Cold War-like competitive environment) -SuperSonicSP (talk) 15:16, July 25, 2015 (UTC)